Scientific Approach

Since the dawn of time enlightened humans have been trying to
understand the meaning of existence and our personal relationship with
it all. When doing so inevitably we run into the problem of the
reconciling between the private, subjective "first person" view of
mental life and the observable so called objective "third person" view
of external reality. Clearly our consciousness is intimately involved
with both of these often conflicting yet complementary views on the
nature our existence. So if we want to understand the nature of reality
and our place in it we better understand the nature of consciousness
itself.

In the modern era the prevailing view is that our consciousness is an
epiphenomena or by-product of brain processes. Discover how the brain
works and the interconnections between the parts and you figure out the
basis for our consciousness. In this view we are nothing more than
biological machines programmed to do whatever nature and evolution has
programed us to do. This would imply that there is no meaning or purpose
to our lives and that we are here as a result of some random acts of
nature. However this view does not sit well with our subjective
consciousness as it creates a huge conflict with our innate and
intuitive spiritual understanding of our connection to all of creation.

Increasingly the evidence is growing that some aspect of our
consciousness can transcend the natural boundary of our physical body
and our normal sensory perceptual mechanisms. Since the early 1900’s it
has been known that consciousness can affect the outcome of various
experiments at the subatomic, atomic and molecular level. More recently
evidence is also accumulating that consciousness affect material objects
at the macro (larger scale sizes) as well.

So called psychic phenomenon has been studied extensively in the
laboratory where consciousness influences material objects outside of
the body with results that occur way beyond what would be expected by
random chance. The literature is full of anecdotal stories of mind to
mind connections between individuals that have a strong emotional bond
especially during times of stressful or dramatic events. More recently
we have seen a significant increase in transcendent or spiritually
transformative experiences such as NDEs. Is this due to better reporting
and perhaps partially to modern medicine and its incredible capability
to resuscitate those who most likely would not have survived in earlier
times? Have these phenomena always existed? Surveying the historic
literature, we believe that the answer is clearly yes.

Taken all together, evidence is becoming overwhelming that our
consciousness is much more than our modern mainstream scientific world
view can account for. If consciousness can extend its influence outside
the confines of the body, is it much of a leap to consider whether some
aspect of it also survives bodily death? More to the point, perhaps our
modern understanding of nature is not correct; it is not just matter and
energy that are fundamental in nature but, instead, matter, energy and
consciousness.

Throughout all of history people have be reporting extraordinary
experiences, great insights and a connection to something that was much
larger than just themselves. They did the best to explain their
experiences but since most were well beyond everyday experience, words
could not even begin to describe them. Instead they did their best to
relate their experiences and insights to the prevailing paradigms and
understanding of human knowledge that existed at the time. They often
spoke in metaphor and allegory. Some were so persuasive and influential
that whole cultures were influenced by them and, in some cases,
religions eventually sprang from them.

Given that humanity’s modern understanding of nature and the
phenomena alluded to above, we at Eternea believe that the time is long overdue to investigate the subjective and objective aspects of our consciousness and their relationship to objective reality. This must be done by applying the rigor of modern scientific methods of investigation. To that end Eternea is focusing on the softer
aspects of consciousness such as subjective human experience including
the transformational and survival aspects of it and the implications of
these experiences to ourselves and to the human condition. This is the
driving force behind Eternea’s research program.